Black Necked Cranes Dinner Plates designed by Padmaja @ Artful House.
To think we've never given much though to Bhutan despite being its neighbor growing up, though I do remember the Druk Jams and Pickles with lids that often times would open only with a hammer and chisel! Its encouraging to see how this small country with a literacy rate of 52% is striving to balance economy and nature, understanding the benefits of organic farming with relation to the cranes habitat.
Each time I go back home, I feel as if folks there are in a rush to catch up with the developed world, letting go of their frugal ways to embrace excessive consumption with abandon. While ironically, back here we're so aware of going/being green, starting with clearly labeled and illustrated bins in school cafeterias to cities adopting green bins for organic waste composting.
We grew up in households that generated mostly food and organic waste that was composted. Plastic bags were a luxury, carefully folded and put away under mattresses to remove the creases. Store keepers wrapped produce in newspapers and bound them with twine and the newspapers once home would be recycled again. Spring cleaning entailed newspapers, magazines, tins, cans, bottles, metal etc getting weighed and sold as scrap to Kabadiwalas,the guys on bicycles screeching "Pepwar, Kakejh!!" Ooh!.. that brought up a vivid memory of how my sister, on one of her frequent missions to declutter our house, sold all of my brothers books to one of these guys - only to have my brother, upon discovering this act of OCD, rush after the fellow and buy it all back for twice as much!!
Well, who knew..there's a FB site for the kabadiwalas !https://www.facebook.com/ONLINEKABADIWALA
If nothing else, looks like technology can play its part in bringing about awareness...
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Just-log-on-to-find-a-kabadiwala/Article1-659422.aspx
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/kabadiwalas-end-up-with-too-much-waste-too-little-moolah/872538/
It must've been a hard life for the Kabadiwalas, lugging around huge sacks of scrap, performing a precarious balancing act on their rusty bicycles in the 100 + heat of most summer days.
I wish I had a picture of them but while searching the net, I came across a very interesting blog, a lady from California who calls India her home and lives up in a remote Himalayan village....
http://enjoyingindia.com/2011/05/30/life-in-a-remote-himalayan-village/
http://enjoyingindia.com/2010/04/21/who-are-the-kabadiwalas/
Not that I'm quite ready to give up the wonderful chaos in my life but it made for an interesting read.
Not sure how I started with the "Artful House' black necked crane plates and ended up with the Kabadiwalas and a remote Himalayan village....
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